Quotes by Orville Wright

“Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.”

“The airplane stays up because it doesn't have the time to fall.”

“With twelve horse power at our command, we considered that we could permit the weight of the machine with operator to rise to 750 or 800 pounds, and still have as much surplus power as we had origi...”

“With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a twenty-seven mile wind, even ...”

“The course of the flight up and down was exceedingly erratic, partly due to the irregularity of the air, and partly to lack of experience in handling this machine. The control of the front rudder w...”

“In just six weeks from the time the design was started, we had the motor on the block testing its power.”

“If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.”

“If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true really is true, then there would be little hope for advance.”

“We came down here for wind and sand, and we have got them.”

“We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong ... I don't have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one ...”

“For two reasons we decided to use two propellers. In the first place we could, by the use of two propellers, secure a reaction against a greater quantity of air, and at the same time use a larger p...”

“Wilbur, having used his turn in the unsuccessful attempt on the 14th, the right to the first trial now belonged to me. After running the motor a few minutes to heat it up, I released the wire that ...”

“At twenty minutes after eleven Wilbur started on the second flight. The course of this flight was much like that of the first, very much up and down. The speed over the ground was somewhat faster t...”

“Twenty minutes later the third flight started. This one was steadier than the first one an hour before. I was proceeding along pretty well when a sudden gust from the right lifted the machine up tw...”

“Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just 12 o’clock. The first few hundred feet were up and down as before, but by the time three hundred feet had been covered, the machine was under much ...”

“It impressed me that Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers were so single-minded in figuring out how to make a light bulb or an airplane. They spent lots of time obsessively perfecting their invent...”

“On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, another American born and raised in southwestern Ohio, stepped onto the moon, he carried with him, in tribute to the Wright brothers, a small swatch of the mu...”